Birds-eye view of Camp de Gurs by a German Jewish internee

Lili Andrieux (1914-1996) was born Lili Sophie Abraham in Berlin, Germany, to Hans (1880-1955) and Margarete (nee Landau, 1887-1963) Abraham. She had two brothers, Joachim (1912-1958) and Peter (1916-1988), and a sister, Gabriele (later Nanda, 1928-2014). The Abrahams were a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family, and Hans was a respected notary or lawyer .

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Anti-Jewish decrees were passed that restricted every aspect of Jewish life. Despite this, that same year, Lili became the only Jewish woman admitted to the Hochschule fur Kunsterzeichnung (the State College for Art Education) in Berlin. Admittance to the school was based on portfolio work. In September 1935, the Nazis announced the Nuremberg Laws, which excluded Jews from citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having relations with non-Jewish persons. This likely prompted Lili’s brother, Peter, to immigrate to England in 1936 and find work in leather tanning and shoe manufacturing. In the 1930s, the other members of her family also immigrated to England, where Margarete’s brother lived. Because of the laws, Lili was not permitted to take her final exams in 1937. In 1938, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Ranson Academie and permanently adopted the French surname Andrieux.

Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, two days after Germany invaded Poland. In November 1939, Lili’s brother, Peter, left England for Melbourne, Australia, and changed his name to Peter Landan. On May 7, 1940, Lili’s parents and her siblings, Joachim and Gabriele, sailed from England, to the United States. The family settled in Massachusetts, with the support of Hans Apel, a family friend from Berlin who had immigrated to the United States in 1937. Lili’s father obtained a research position at Harvard University, and Joachim worked as a gardener, farmer, and a stockman.

German forces invaded France on May 10, 1940, and the following month, France signed an armistice agreement with Germany. Germany occupied northern and western France, while southern and eastern France was governed by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy, suspending the constitution of the Third Republic. Soon after, Lili was taken to the transit center in Alencon, the Department of de L’Orne in Normandy. On June 4, she was transferred to Gurs internment camp in southwestern France near the Spanish border. In March 1941, Lili was moved to the Hotel Terminus du port in Marseilles, where women and children were held while waiting for visas and immigration permits. In September, she was transferred back to Gurs until November, when she was returned to the Hotel Terminus. While imprisoned, she created over 100 detailed drawings of daily domestic life, and the different groups held in the camps. An exhibit of her works was held in Aix-en-Provence in 1942, but they did not include scenes of the internment camp, as this was forbidden by camp regulations. On September 2, 1942, Lili was sent to the Family Reunion center in Les Milles internment camp, with the other women and children who had been held in hotels in Marseilles. She contracted typhus and was hospitalized in Aix-en-Provence. When she was discharged on September 26, she escaped and lived in hiding for the duration of the war with the aid of the French resistance, which she joined .

On August 24, 1944, the German forces in France surrendered. Lili remained in Aix-en-Provence, working as a translator and multi-lingual secretary for the American Army and the US Graves Registration Command. In September 1946, after receiving a scholarship for the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, she immigrated to the US, leaving Marseille aboard the Athos II. She married Ricardo Ester (1916-2004), whom she had met in Camp de Gurs. Ricardo, born in Barcelona, was a refugee from Francisco Franco’s fascist Spain, and had been a pilot for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). They settled in San Diego, California, where Lili had a career as a commercial artist. Her work was occasionally exhibited, and is owned by the Lochamei HaGhetaot and the Bibliotheque Nationale, as well as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.